24 Carrots Co. is a bicycle home delivery service for fresh, local, and high-quality produce. They aim to make good produce more accessible to Vancouver, to support small, local farmers, and to help people cook more, eat healthier, and to rationally feel good about their food choices. 24 Carrots Co. purveys produce only from farms employing the most best growing methods and delivers it all by bicycle to homes across Vancouver.
Photo: Clou/Eli Horn
What is Biodynamic farming?
Its a farming method that can most succinctly be described as organic plus. Biodynamic farms are all totally organic (no pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizers). But, in the range of farms with organic certification, like people with university degrees, you get the everyone from the C- students to the A+ students. Biodynamic farms are all A and A+ students, and have their own certification to demonstrate that. There are some really great organic farms out there that aren't biodynamic that would get those top grades too, but the biodynamic ones are all at the top. The biodynamic farms we work with aim to be as self-sustaining as possible by doing things like producing the majority of their inputs on the farm, re-utilizing all the by-products of their operation, raising some crops and livestock for the benefits they provide for the health of the farm rather than raising only products to sell, and by leaving large portions of the farms fallow to regenerate soil productivity and provide wildlife habitat. The farms also use some cool tools conceived by Rudolph Steiner (the guy who started the Waldorf schools) to increase productivity on their farms, like Preparation 500, which involves burying cow manure stuffed into a cow horn three feet underground in the autumn, then unearthing the decomposed manure in the spring, dissolving it into a solution and applying it homoeopathically to their fields.
How fresh is the produce that is delivered right to your client's doors?
The produce we deliver is always fresh in the spring, summer, and into the early fall, picked no more than one to two days before our customers get it. After the first frost, we continue to deliver some field produce, like kale and cabbages, but everything else is winter produce stored in a root cellar. So in the winter we deliver things like carrots, beets, parsnips, potatoes, apples, pears, and winter squash. Those items keep really well all winter when stored properly.
Who are the farmers you deal with directly?
All of our produce is directly sourced from the farmers. The ones we work with most are the Forstbauer Family Farm in Chilliwack, Biota Farm in Abbotsford, Snowy Mountain Organics in Keremeos, Klippers Organics in Cawston, Helmers' Organic in Pemberton, Ice Cap Organics in Pemberton, and Hannah Brook Farm in Ruskin. Except for Snowy Mountain and Klippers, all of these farms are located within 100 miles of the city.
What are the benefits of supporting local farmers? Why is it important for small-scale agriculture to be economically viable in Vancouver?
There are so many reasons to support good local farmers, its hard to list them all. Firstly, the food one can get from sources like 24 Carrots or the farmers' markets is almost always going to be fresher than the produce in any grocery store, and fresher produce is also more nutritious produce.
Secondly, supporting good local farms helps us to reduce the environmental impact and resource use of our food production compared with food grown on industrial farms far away, which is where most of the food most of us eat actually comes from. Small farmers who own their land are almost guaranteed to be better stewards of the land than pretty much any other use you can think of, from large farms to real estate development, because good small farms, like the ones we support, tend to increase biodiversity on their land, provide wildlife habitat, act as recycling plants for environmental toxins, and rotate their crops so as not to deplete the soil. Plus, keeping small farms profitable keeps valuable land out of the hands of developers, thereby fending off stupid sprawl-style growth outside of our urban areas.
Another good reason, a bit more sensational, is the importance of BC, Cascadia, Canada -- our region, however it breaks down -- to be capable of producing its own food in case of another kind of break-down of international trade relationships. In recent years alone, a handful of "food crises," in rice, for example, have occurred, in which prices spike and certain countries put a halt on all their food exports. A situation like that could get pretty bad for us if it was prolonged and we couldn't produce enough of our own food. Think about it -- it would really suck to go hungry. Supporting local farmers and encouraging the growth of that sector of our economy is a pretty tasty price to pay for that kind of security.
Does the community aspect of 24 Carrots create unique relationships with clients?
We do our best to meet all of our customers before their subscription to our service begins. We think its an important part of building a network of good customers that we want to do business with, and we also want our customers to know that our business is made of real people, and is not just a website interface. Also, it helps us to tell the story of the produce they get from us. Once our customers have met us, and if they've ever been to the farmers' markets (which most have), then they've seen the entire chain of hands that their food passes through to get to their door, which we believe is an important thing for people to know. People want to get away from faceless grocery store food and be a part of a simpler, less industrial food system in which an item's providence can be easily understood. We do this for our customers, and it all starts and ends with personal relationships.
Apart from bringing local produce from local farms to people's homes, are there other ways you are linking households to farms?
Each delivery day, we send out a newsletter explaining what produce our customers are receiving and which farms it comes from, along with recipe and storage tips. Plus, we always provide some info about the farms, about what's growing now, what's going to be harvested soon, how the weather is affecting certain crops, etc. In this way, we try to give our customers more knowledge than they might otherwise have about what's going on on the farms they're getting their food from and why, so they better understand what it takes to get their food to their plates.
You used to be an employee at Sprouts at UBC, were there any significant events or experiences that pushed you to spearhead your own company? Why did you want to start 24 Carrots Co.?
Working at Sprouts (a student-run cafe/food security organization at UBC; http://ubcsprouts.ca/) I learned that business doesn't have to always be some evil and soulless monster that eats culture and cute girls and shits out profits. Sprouts taught me to shake off those sort of naive undergraduate liberal arts ideas and see that the words "good" and "business" are not mutually exclusive. Business can build community, can support positive social and economic development, and doesn't have to suck up non-renewable resources for the sake of efficiency. Running Sprouts was really inspiring for me because I got the chance to intimately experience the excitement that so many young people had for good food, good business, and building a community around those things, and how that excitement energized those students and myselft to volunteer our time to operate the place. After I graduated I needed a job, so I started 24 Carrots Co. (then Grocer Gunst) in my neighbourhood to try to bring and build on the same energy I experienced at Sprouts.
What can people expect in their 24 Carrots Co. bins?
Our produce bins are stocked with always-changing variety of seasonal produce. One can expect to find any combination of six or seven produce varieties they might see at the farmers' market on any given week, in our Small bins. We offer three sizes of bins -- Small, Medium, and Large; in the $20, $30, and $40 ranges respectively -- plus, we offer the option of getting eggs. Each larger bin size is likely to contain an extra item or two compared to the immediately smaller size.
Are delivery services like 24 Carrots common in the Greater Vancouver area?
As far as I know, no one else is doing quite what we're doing. Some businesses like SPUD do produce box deliveries, but they certainly cannot claim to provide only fresh, local produce from small farms. With them, you're just as likely to get something from Mexico or New Zealand as you are from BC. NOWBC is a full online grocery co-op that supports local farmers, but they don't do home deliveries. The Home Grow-In is also a great local business purveying only local produce -- though not all seasonal -- but they don't do home deliveries either.
What is the process of becoming a customer of 24 Carrots?
Customers need to email us some basic info: their name, address, phone number, what size box they'd like, how many weeks they want to sign up for, instructions on where to leave the bin if they're not home, and how they want to pay. We accept payments of cash, cheque, or Paypal, and we require receipt of payment before the first delivery. We implemented that last policy because we'd actually been screwed by some people who ordered a bin, then never paid for it. Since we do deliveries twice a week, usually we'll pick up the payment from the customer's house a half-week before their first delivery. This way its really easy for the customer to pay, and we get the chance to meet them too. When we visit a customer's home, we also get to scope out the drop-off spot so there's no confusion on delivery day. And for customers in apartment buildings, its also an opportunity for us to get the key to the exterior door of their building so we can leave the produce bin inside.
Do you offer any kind trial for new customers?
Our customers have a lot of flexibility within our service. Customers sign up for subscriptions of any length of their choosing -- from a 1 week trial to a 30 week harvest season. So, they can totally do a trial, most customers do, though I would recommend a slightly longer trial, like 4 weeks. Since the variety of produce changes week to week and each week we have new recipes and info in the newsletter, I think that one week won't give someone new to our service a full picture of what we do. Customers get price breaks at 4 week, 8 week, and 16 week subscriptions, so its a better deal to sign up for a month anyway.
